Now Banned From Chinese Banquets: Bird’s Nest and Shark’s Fin

No pricey booze, cigarettes, shark’s fin or bird’s nest at official banquets — so what’s left at the table?

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A government-led austerity drive is taking all the fun out of being a Chinese official.

The latest anti-corruption measures, issued Sunday, ban cigarettes and upscale liquor as well as classic Chinese delicacies like sharks’ fin and birds’ nests from official banquets.

It’s part of a drive to portray the country’s civil service as a model in austerity. So far, the public response has been a heap of skepticism.

The central government’s most recent austerity orders take aim at some of the most visible symbols of official excess. Birds’ nest soup, made from the saliva of swiftlets, and shark fins are a fixture at expensive Chinese soirees. Premium birds’ nest can command $155 a gram, making it more expensive than silver, while shark fin can fetch up to $700 a kilogram, according to the Australian Marine Conservation Society.

There’s one caveat: China has tried to get its officials to dial it back before. It issued a similar edict seven years ago (in Chinese), though the wording used at the time was vaguer, calling on civil servants “not to use public funds for ‘excessive dining.’ ”

This time around, the government was more explicit. It named “shark fin, birds’ nest and other high-end cuisine and meals made from protected wild animals” as dishes that mustn’t reach official dining tables. But the move should have come as no surprise to civil servants — Beijing last year warned it would introduce the prohibition soon.

All this is reshaping what it means to be a Chinese bureaucrat. In the past, the Chinese civil servant’s position was popularly associated with perquisites such as black Audi cars, premium Moutai liquor and endless rounds of boozy karaoke evenings. That’s no longer as true, with the government’s anti-graft campaign extending to interdictions on alcohol, mooncakes, fireworks and those conspicuously inscrutable black cars.

On China’s Sina Weibo microblogging platform, the country’s nearest equivalent to a national forum, one blogger – who appeared to be a civil servant – complained that these new requirements were just plain un-Chinese. “How can you treat officials of a higher position than yourself to a mediocre restaurant?” one blogger wrote. “If high officials agree to dinner, it is too embarrassing to treat them to somewhere poor. Chinese people just love ‘face.’”

Sunday’s edict doesn’t just entail food. The document also detailed regulations on the use of public funds for entertainment and limits the number of people allowed to accompany officials to dinners. It bars some from a travel entitlement to hotel suites, and stops bureaucrats from receiving a range of gifts. The rule’s clearest expansions from 2006 were on the food items, a requirement for officials to submit details of travel plans, and requirements to disclose public expenditures on receptions to the Ministry of Finance.

The new regulation will also apply to state-owned companies and state-sponsored organizations, it said.

The fresh proposals haven’t scored high in public approval, at least judging by a stream of skepticism on China’s microblogs. For some, there was recognition that the latest edict wasn’t exactly new. “What we need is not regulation, but the courage to enforce regulation,” said one user.

“The regulations are (like) a kind father educating his good-for-nothing sons,” said one user. “But will his sons listen? This is a warning to officials and is more progressive than practical.”

Wildlife officials say the new regulations could mark the start of stricter state control over Chinese trade in endangered species’ parts, such as African ivory and rhinoceros horns. “I think this sets up the new administration’s willingness to reduce consumption of endangered wildlife,” said Jeff He, a Beijing-based communications manager for the International Fund for Animal Welfare. “The current notice sends out a very strong signal that the administration is responding.”

It’s less clear whether previous government action has actually cut trade in wild animals and their parts. Wildlife groups including the IFAW, the World Wildlife Fund and Greenpeace didn’t have data immediately available, and smuggling masks actual trade trends. But China’s commerce ministry has claimed victory in one aspect, according to the official Xinhua news agency. Ministry spokesman Shen Danyang said consumption of shark fin fell 70% and birds’ nest by 40% around this year’s Lunar New Year because of the anti-waste campaign, though the ministry didn’t provide a specific time frame for comparison.